Bain Book

Decide & Deliver

Decide & Deliver

5 Steps to Breakthrough Performance in Your Organization

By Marcia Blenko, Michael Mankins and Paul Rogers

Decide & Deliver

Dithering. Decisions that turn out wrong. Decisions that people sabotage or don't know how to implement. Most organizations experience these problems. And they're paying a high price—as profitability and competitiveness erode.

It doesn't have to be this way. Great organizations know how to make great decisions quickly and execute them effectively. They don’t spend too much (or too little) effort in the process. They have consistently high performance, year in and year out.

In Decide & Deliver, the authors draw on extensive experience and research to present a five-step process for improving decision effectiveness:

  1. Assess decision effectiveness and how the organization supports or inhibits it.
  2. Identify critical decisions.
  3. Set individual critical decisions up for success.
  4. Build an integrated organizational system which enables great decision making and execution throughout.
  5. Embed the changes in everyday practice.

Companies that master this process see immediate results: motivated, engaged employees collaborating to make and execute crucial decisions better and faster than competitors, fueling unprecedented financial performance.

Filled with powerful hands-on tools and detailed examples from companies, Decide & Deliver helps companies turn decision management a potent competitive weapon.

About the Authors

About the Authors

Michael Mankins

Michael Mankins

Michael Mankins is a partner in Bain & Company’s San Francisco office and a leader in the firm’s Organization practice. Much of his work has focused on strategic and organizational initiatives that improve performance and create long-term value. He is a coauthor of Time, Talent, Energy and The Value Imperative.

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Marcia Blenko

Marcia Blenko

Marcia Blenko is an advisory partner in Bain & Company’s Boston office and a cofounder of the firm’s Global Organization practice. She has extensive experience collaborating with clients to optimize organizational design, improve decision and execution capabilities and lead successful implementation of organizational change.

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Paul Rogers

Paul Rogers

Paul Rogers is the former managing director of Bain Middle East & Turkey and a cofounder of the firm’s Global Organization practice. For over 30 years, Paul advised clients across industries on topics such as strategy, organizational effectiveness, customer and operational excellence, merger integration, business transformation and the leadership of effective change.

What Others Are Saying

What Others Are Saying

Very useful. A key element of the Ford transformation has been building a process and a team that can decide and deliver.

Alan Mulally, former CEO, Ford Motor Company

Decide and Deliver makes a compelling case that success in the modern organization depends on focusing on the decisions that really matter and connecting people at all levels to make and execute them well.

Sheryl Sandberg, COO, Facebook

The business library shelves are full of books on strategy, organization, and motivation. But what sets Decide and Deliver apart is that it deals with the fundamental building blocks of business—what it takes to make consistently good decisions.

Thomas H. Glocer, former CEO, Thomson Reuters Corporation

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